4 Predictions for the Future of Content Marketing

• Updated on: 2017-10-29
• Read original article here

As technology evolves, so does the content marketing industry. And it's about to get so much more exciting: As someone who has been in the industry for the past decade, I've seen many changes. I started off writing blog posts back in 2009 to answer my clients' frequently asked questions. I now manage multiple sites with millions of monthly readers.

Here are some of my upcoming predictions for the future of the content marketing:

I think that video is the future of content marketing. It is one of the fastest growing and most in-demand forms of marketing out there. If you're not jumping on the bandwagon, you're missing out on a cool opportunity to reach your target audience and generate revenue.

The main benefit of video marketing is that consumers are finding a deeper connection with brands that produce video content regularly. I noticed this with my site List25: Originally, we started off by creating blog posts. After seeing a trend to video, we reformatted the blog posts to a video format and grew our YouTube channel to over 2 million subscribers. As video is highly visual and auditory, it's easier for many users to remember than any other forms of content.

Figure out what your audience wants to see and create videos based on it. Video marketing thrives online, particularly on social networks, including YouTube and Facebook. Make sure to distribute your videos to those sites to drive more traffic to your site. Ensure that the title of your video is search-friendly so it's is easy to find. Use tools like Google's Keyword Planner to find high-volume keywords your audience is searching for with low competition.

It's not surprising that compared to untargeted content, personalized content is more likely to bring in conversions and revenue. We'll see that more and more marketers strive to incorporate personalization into their strategies to achieve their marketing goals.

Collect your potential customers' preferences and onsite behavior by getting your website visitor's email addresses and segmenting lists based on their experience with your site. One of the most non-intrusive ways to collect your visitor's email addresses is by using an exit intent technology. Users only receive a pop up as they are about to leave the site. You can then deliver relevant content based on this data addressing their concerns.

Why do most digital entrepreneurs fail at content marketing despite increasing their content marketing budgets and expenditure? The problem lies in the inability to scale their content efforts effectively.

Before you can scale your content effort, you need to have a clear content strategy for your business. Step back for a moment and create yourself a content strategy. My team and I typically start by brainstorming topic ideas using tools like Answer the Public and Google's Keyword Planner. We then come up with a catchy headline (with the targeted keyword) and start writing. To create content at scale, focus on ROI and map content to the user journey and KPIs.

While more content isn't necessarily better, marketers are busy creating easy, consumable pieces of content that fit into the brand's promotional strategy. To boost ROI, rather than creating heaps of content, I suggest focusing on creating a single post addressing your ideal customer's concerns at every stage in the sales process.

Funnel your steps into creating content that helps your buyers to make their purchasing decision easier. Reach out to your customers through different social networks and figure out what content they're consuming and sharing. Make sure to add value to their conversations and insert your message in a way that's useful for them.

When it comes to content marketing, there's always more to publish, more keywords to target and more customer questions to answer. Unless you shift your focus to work smarter, not harder, your content strategy will seem destined to fail. Make sure to streamline your content strategy and focus on quality over quantity.

Syed Balkhi is the co-founder of OptinMonster, a conversion rate optimization software that helps you recover abandoning website visitors and turn them into subscribers and customers.